Get Smart

David Perkins, co-director of Harvard University's Proj-ect Zero,
remembers the first time he thought up his own theory of intelligence.
It was a decade ago at one of the occasional seminars that the center,
which specializes in cognitive development, held for its researchers.
About seven of them were gathered around, and Howard Gardner, who
directs the center with Perkins, was describing his then-emerging
theory of multiple intelligences.

To Perkins, it appeared that intelligence had three dimensions. One
was like a weight lifter, who, by dint of genetics, good nutrition, and
exercise, worked efficiently. Another was like a cook who provides the
recipes that have been learned from years of experience. The third was
like an army general who has a broad overview of how everything works
together and the strategic knowledge to deploy resources where they are
needed.

It wasn't until years later that Perkins gave more
technical-sounding names to his three dimensions and wove them into a
theory of how the mind works. Now, he's putting forth that theory in a
new book called Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable
Intelligence.

Published by the Free Press, Outsmarting IQ both tries to explain
Perkins' theory as well as counter the more pessimistic view of
intelligence published last fall in The Bell Curve: Intelligence and
Class Structure in American Life, by Charles Murray and the late
Richard Herrnstein.

Whereas Herrnstein and Murray depicted intelligence as primarily
genetically determined, Perkins contends that it is multifaceted. And,
while Herrnstein and Murray say intelligence is immutable, Perkins
contends that people can be taught to be smarter. "There is no
startling proposal here that porpoises or planaria or poplar trees can
acquire intelligence,'' he writes. "The claim is much more modest:
Human beings, manifestly the most intelligent life on the planet, can
become even more so.''

In the world of research, theories on the nature of intelligence are
plentiful. Some, however, have achieved more prominence than
others.

As controversial as they seem, some of the views on intelligence
that Herrnstein and Murray espoused in The Bell Curve come from a long
line of traditional thinking in the field. Many studies support notions
that general intelligence is a single entity that can be readily
measured by IQ tests, that it is unchangeable, and that it is largely
inherited. Some of these studies suggest, in fact, that up to 60
percent of intelligence is a product of genetics. Herrnstein and Murray
drew their sharpest criticisms, however, for suggesting that certain
groups of people, such as blacks, were intellectually inferior.

Almost diametrically opposed to this group are scientists such as
Harvard's Gardner and Yale University's Robert Sternberg, who believe
intelligence is both multifaceted and teachable. The two camps have
been at odds for decades.

To Perkins, however, the whole debate conjures up the story of the
six blind men and the elephant. As the story goes, the first man feels
the animal's huge side and declares that an elephant is like a high,
strong wall. The second grabs a tusk and decides the elephant is like a
spear, and so it goes, with each man holding a different part of the
elephant and deciding that his experience represents the whole
animal.

"Of course, there are real disagreements in the field,'' the
53-year-old Perkins says. "But a large part of the clutter has to do
with folks studying different aspects of intelligence and championing
them as if they were all of intelligence.''

Perkins' theory, on the other hand, incorporates all of these views.
From the traditionalists like Herrnstein and Murray, he takes his first
dimension, the weight lifter. That's what Perkins now calls "neural
intelligence.'' It refers, in a sense, to the efficiency of the brain's
hardwiring, and it is largely inherited.

From the theoreticians like Gardner, who hold out the more
optimistic view that intelligence is teachable, come Perkins' cook and
general analogies. The cook, which Perkins calls "experiential
intelligence,'' is the contribution to intelligent behavior that comes
from one's storehouse of personal experiences. The general represents
what Perkins has dubbed "reflective intelligence.'' This is the
contribution made by knowledge, understanding, and attitudes about how
to use one's mind well--how to deploy one's intellectual resources most
strategically.

"You can 'know your way around' the good use of your mind in much
the same way you can know your way around your neighborhood, the game
of baseball, or the stock market,'' Perkins writes in his book.

Of the three dimensions, Perkins says, reflective intelligence may
be the area with the most room for improvement. It is also the
centerpiece of his theory. If King George III had thought more
reflectively when the American colonies rebelled, Perkins points out,
there might never have been a Revolutionary War. A lack of reflective
thinking, he says, may also be responsible for the wide range of common
intellectual mishaps that occur when otherwise intelligent people seem
to act in unintelligent ways. These include the tendency to think
narrowly or to come to judgments hastily.

Yet, he says, reflective thinking is rarely addressed in schools in
a "steady, informed, and intense'' way. Teachers have to do more than
encourage students to think critically; they also must teach thinking
skills in a much more explicit way. "To do it well, you need to raise
consciousness about the thinking patterns themselves,'' he says.
"What's lacking, in other words, is explicit awareness of how the
thinking game is played.''

As evidence that teaching thinking works, he points to four programs
that claim to have had a proven track record. One of the most
well-known was Project Intelligence, a Venezuelan effort launched in
1978 to teach thinking skills on a widespread basis. When 450 of the
Venezuelan 7th graders were tested on a range of intellectual skills in
1982 and 1983, they showed a consistent edge over students who had not
been taught thinking strategies. Among the many cognitive scientists
who worked on that project were Herrnstein and Perkins. Ironically,
Herrnstein later wrote disparagingly of the project in The Bell
Curve.

Perkins acknowledges that over the years such educational projects
have produced less than dramatic and, sometimes, short-term gains.

"What I hope to see is a clear pattern of evidence that efforts to
cultivate people's thinking can make a difference,'' he says. "Like
efforts on smoking, I hope there will be a steady accumulation of
evidence that will help shift the intellectual ground.''

--Debra Viadero

The "Research'' section is being underwritten by a grant from the
Spencer Foundation.

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